Armstrong's fall began with 'tattooed guy'

NEW YORK TIMES |
October 19, 2012
| Updated: October 19, 2012 6:42pm

Lance Armstrong's fall from the top of competitive cycling began when an obscure bicyclist admitted to doping, triggering an investigation of the sport.

UPLAND, Calif. - The long road to Lance Armstrong's demise began here, across the world from the French Alps where he rode to the pinnacle of cycling, at a tattoo parlor in the foothills east of Los Angeles.

Covered in ink from his legs to his neck, Kayle Leogrande, owner of the shop, competed full time as a professional cyclist for only a couple of years. He met Armstrong in person only once, he said, at a 2005 race in Ojai, Calif.

"I talked to him briefly after the race," said Leogrande. "I'm sure he thought, 'Who is this stupid tattooed guy?' "

But whether Armstrong remembered the tattooed guy or not, their fates would soon become intertwined.

Four years ago, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency slapped Leogrande with a suspension for using a blood-boosting hormone known as EPO. And it was this case that grew into the investigation that lasted for years and that culminated in Armstrong's lifetime ban from competitive cycling.

"When I see what's going on with Lance now, I have to laugh to myself a little bit," Leogrande, now 35, said as he sat in his shop, still dumbfounded that he had played a pivotal role in the fall of Armstrong.

That downfall became absolute Wednesday, when Nike terminated its sponsorship contract with Armstrong and he announced that he was stepping down as chairman of Livestrong, his cancer foundation.

Leogrande the key

Travis Tygart, chief executive of the anti-doping agency, said Leogrande's doping sparked a series of events that led the agency - as well as federal investigators - to make formal inquiries into drug use in cycling. The investigators then followed a trail that led to Armstrong and his U.S. Postal Service team.

"Without Leogrande, who knows, the Armstrong investigation maybe never would have happened," Tygart said.

A high-level cyclist as a teenager, he gave up racing at 17. But after watching Armstrong on tele­vision in that 2004 Tour de France, Leogrande began riding again. Despite his long layoff, he was still a talented rider, and the next year, he was signed by a professional team.

By this point, however, the landscape of competitive cycling had shifted drastically from the one Leogrande had walked away from a decade earlier. When he began to race competitively again, other professionals started talking to him about doping.

Leogrande said he first bought EPO in late 2006 from Joe Papp, a former pro cyclist who has since been convicted of dealing performance-enhancing drugs. Without a doctor to advise him, he was not even sure how much to take, or when. The first few times he did it, he said, it left him feeling as if he had the flu.

In 2007, though, he signed for the Rock Racing team, where he was introduced to former teammates of Armstrong's. And he began doping more regularly.

'Do what you need to'

But during a race in July 2006 in which he finished second, he was subjected to a drug test. Worried that he would fail, he confided in his team's soigneur, Suzanne Sonye, about his doping.

Somehow, Leogrande's drug test did not come back positive. But Sonye reported his confession to USADA. Her testimony, and evidence provided by Papp, sank Leogrande.

At the end of 2008, USADA suspended him for two years, making him the first rider it barred based on "non­analytical" evidence, rather than on failed drug tests.

Soon after the suspension he moved out of the house he had been renting, leaving behind a box of EPO in the refrigerator. When his landlady found it, he said, she called and asked him what she should do with the drugs.

He told her, "Do what you need to do."

She called the Food and Drug Administration. A few weeks later, Leogrande said, Jeff Novitzky, the FDA investigator who had linked other high-profile athletes like Marion Jones and Barry Bonds to steroids, showed up at his door.